Shadow Man by Melissa Scott

Shadow Man by Melissa Scott

In the far future, human culture has developed five distinctive genders due to the effects of a drug easing sickness from faster-than-light travel. But on the planet Hara, where society is increasingly instability, caught between hard-liner traditions and the realities of life, only male and female genders are legal, and the odd-bodied population are forced to pass as one or the other. Warreven Stiller, a lawyer and an intersexed person, is an advocate for those who have violated Haran taboos. When Hara regains contact with the Concord worlds, Warreven finds a larger role in breaking the long-standing role society has forced on him, but the search for personal identity becomes a battleground of political intrigue and cultural clash. Winner of a Lambda Literary Award for Gay/Lesbian Science Fiction, Shadow Man remains one of the more important modern, speculative novels ever published in the field of gender- and sexual identity.

Melissa Scott grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, studied history at Harvard, and wrote her first novel while pursuing her PhD in comparative history at Brandeis. She's written over thirty original books and a few short stories, the most of which feature gay themes and characters, as well as official Star Trek, Stargate, and Star Wars Rebels tie-in novels. She was awarded the John W. In 1986, she won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, was nominated for the Lambda Literary and Spectrum Awards, was nominated for the Tiptree Award, and many of her short tales were anthologized in Year's Best.